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meh, it's obviously quick, but noisy, hot and draws a hell of a lot of power. Also choice of motherboard is not great and only 2x120Gb SSD for that money I'd want a TB :p Finally no dedicated sound card. If you care that much about game visuals and are driving a surround display (otherwise why buy this) then you want the best in surround sound too.Reply

The mobo has optical out - that is good for 5.1 surround anyway. So, you essentially use 3 or 6 projectors for video surround, and pre amp or receiver for audio. At that point the $9k computer is negligible expenditure :):):) as part of the entire setup. And yes, I have seen such.Reply

At this price we're looking at what are in effect fully custom systems; and since nVidia paid for the box as a GPU demo and AnandTech isn't setup for hifi testing anyway there wasn't any reason to put a dedicated card in. If you wanted one they'd find a combo to make it work (although looking at boards on Newegg that might mean going to an XLATX system for even more hugeness).Reply

HDMI w audio may be fine for HTPC, but for gaming, you probably want video to your monitor, and audio to your stereo, so HDMI audio would just make things more complicated; you'd have to have an A/V receiver, and it'd have to be powered on anytime you want to use your computer/monitor.Reply

Gotta agree with this- I ended up ditching my HDMI via nVidia setup because it worked extremely poorly in Linux and even in Windows would fail to initialize my HDMI output as an audio device if the screen went to sleep. Luckily the optical out works fine.Reply

meh, the same as a Ferrari, it's obviously quick, but noisy, hot and draws a hell of a lot of fuel.But i'l bet ur lick ur back side for one of those... Anyway, there are always beautiful things for car/boats/computers and whatever enthusiasts .I will definitely want one of those, even if i already have a nice car and a good computer, but as human i will always want more and never will be happy whit whatever i have nowReply

Thanks for the great review, it reminds me of all the reasons why I still read AnandTech after all these years.

However, could you please run your reviews through a good third party for a quality check? It really is distracting to read through the review and have to pause and think.... what's missing here... Oh, it's just that "of" is left off or something similar, I know it slows down the overall release of the review but please consider it.

If it was a more modest setup you wouldn't; but this system has a heavy overclocked CPU and 4 heavily overclocked GPUs; which means it's trying to dump close to 1200W through the radiators. In a more mainstream system you'd have ~80-150W from the CPU and 150-300W from the GPU. In that case a single 3x120 rad with one set of fans (vs push pull) would probably be adequate, and be much quieter under load than the GPUs blower.Reply

Compute performance? I was curious what sort of compute performance you'd get with 3 Titans. Did I just miss that? Of course, it doesn't really matter. I did not find $9k in my pocket this morning. But it would still be interesting to see.Reply

I'd swag it at 3-4 years for a $1200 box; and two more for the $600 pricepoint.

We're probably 2 die shrinks from having similar performance levels in an x70/x80 card. The first shrink will put slightly better than titan level performance down the upper mainstream die size (assuming standard doubling); the second will give a single card with double that and since 3way SLI performance is significantly less than the 3x that linear scaling assumes the 2 die shrink GPU should be in the same ballpark.

That's only 3 years out. Depending on how competitive the market is that card could be anywhere between $250 and $600ish; the lower end of that range should easily make a $1200 system; the top of it will probably be a year behind with the $600 price point needing another die shrink so 2 more years for that or 6 total.Reply

Well, now that you have enough GPU power to push those games, do some core count studies and see what games are seriously benefiting from 2/4/6 cores. This would clearly show where you're being held back by CPU versus GPU.Reply

Very few games are heavily threaded on the CPU today; so finding CPU bottlenecks would be about downclocking the chip not disabling cores. With the PS4 and xbox720 rumored to have 8 relatively lightweight CPU cores we probably will start seeing games able to take better advantage of the width of high end CPUs in a few years; but we're not at that point today.Reply

Ryan writes:> 1340W at the wall is over 11 amps; we’re not to the point where the Genesis> needs a dedicated circuit, but that’s the majority of a 15 amp circuit right there.

Less than 6A where I am. ;)

Finally Edison's daft low-voltage DC-bias legacy is revealing itself. Is it possible that top-endPC tech development may eventually become limited by the comparatively low max poweravailable from a US wall socket? I hope not.

"Is it possible that top-end PC tech development may eventually become limited by the comparatively low max power available from a US wall socket? I hope not."Nope. You already have household items that use power in the thousand Watt range (vacuums, heaters, microwaves etc.), so a PC doing the same thing isn't a problem. And the drive in the PC industry is for lower power consumption overall. No one of the component vendors is pursuing 1k+ Watt PCs. It's the end manufacturers that offer that kind of power consumption beast on their own. And the few people that really need bigger PCs usually have their own circuits to run them off, along with specialized cooling solutions.Reply

I don't understand the choice of 2 120GB SDDs (in RAID 0 nonetheless). And 4x4GB RAM looks wrong in this type of PC. If you go crazy, go crazy on everything. :DAs for the water cooling, I'd rather have another case that supports something like 200/280/360/420 radiators and at least 2 of those. This setup is not very elegant. If you go with such a case, give me an external water cooling radiator like the 1080/1260 ones or install a 480 quad one on the side of the case.Reply

I remember that on the first Titan review, it said nVidia did not have OpenCL support in their Titan drivers and that they were working on fixing whatever issues they were having. Do you know if they have since released a driver that supports OpenCL? If not, do you have any info on a target date? If so, will you be benchmarking this (or other) Titan systems with OpenCL?

120gb SSD, no dedicated sound card and a case that can only accept 120x3 at the top is not going to cut it. Too loud, too hot. Why not use the new Corsair 900. Even though it is not yet available I am sure that Origin could have waited. It will retail at around $350 so not much more than the 800 and has room for 4x120 at the top, 3 x 120 at the front 4 x 120 bottom side and 1 x 140 at the back. Much more sensible cooling options. Would have handled the heat output better reducing load temps and noise. I have GTX 670's in SLI and 3770K all overclocked with a single 140 rad at the back and a triple 120 at the top of my Switch 810, so Origins cooling leaves me meh! And all this for the price of a cheap car! No thanks.Reply

I've seen this before in case reviews and it always confuses (annoys) me. You mention that the manual fans on high are loud, and you post values for the noise at 66% under load, but you don't post the TEMPERATURES of the CPU/GPU at that 66% load. Saying, "At these speeds the Genesis still has plenty of airflow for just about everything, but we would not recommend replicating our 1340W load testing at anything less than full speed since it was at these settings that we hit 81C under full load.", is just not very helpful. We want to know @66% are you now getting close to the limit of components when playing the most demanding game in your arsenal? What about the hard drive, ram, optical drive, etc. that now has to deal with hotter internal temperatures (especially because the top fans have now been forced to work against physics).

I just feel that when numbers are cherry-picked or not fully disclosed (low temps at high fan speeds, and low noise at low fan speeds) a potential buyer doesn't have much helpful REAL WORLD usage and the manufacturer gets put in a better light.

Great review otherwise, I just want to see those extra data points!Reply

The short answer is no, component temperatures don't get too bad when gaming at 66%. The GPUs never exceeded 62C, and the CPU never exceeded 75C. As for the other components, the SSDs and HDD are in their own bay; the only things of note cooled by the primary chamber are the VRMs and RAM, and the latter doesn't have temperature probes.Reply

I wonder if Origin missed the bus with the fans, I've just built a dual Titan rig for a customer with 1 x 360mm and 1 x 240mm radiator, using Scythe Gentle Typhoon 1450 fans, and you can hardly hear it with the fans running full speed. I did use a 3770K @ 4.75Ghz, so there's probably less heat there though. Reply

to put this in perspective, 1300w draw is pretty close to what an average air conditioner sucks down to cool a house. So this computer if running anywhere near 1000w draw while gaming, could effectively double your electric bill in the summer. Especially considering the heat it puts out cooling all these components means you'll run your AC even more to keep the house temperate. Crazy how much power this beast draws.

That being said, under most normal scenarios I'd be willing to bet it still draws in the 300-600w range while surround gaming, if not more, which is a far cry from 1300w, but still enough to seriously spike your electricity use.Reply

I tried some quick searches and couldn't find anyone testing multiple Titans in a dual/triple WQXGA (2650x1600) setup. I'm not really a gamer, is it that no games support 5300x1600 or 7950x1600 resolutions? You mention this in your last paragraph, any numbers for this setup?

Three of those "overclockable" monitors could be had for ~$1400 these days, not out of place for a $9000 computer.Reply

Hey, I have been looking everywhere for a true liquid cooled titan review. Thanks for all the great information.

What I have read about GPU boost 2.0 is that if you can keep the temps below the selected temp max setting the GPU will keep boosting at top speed.

What clock speeds are you hitting when you add the optional voltage increase that Nvidia allows?Given that you can keep temps really low with the liquid cooling. Is this thing hitting 1200 Mhz or what?

As soon as I heard of GPU boost 2.0, I thought this is going to be killer when you can liquid cool the Titan. That's the only thing the article was missing for me.

Don't lie. You kept this system as long as they'd let you, gaming the hell out of it. You "got sick" and then "had some meetings" and what not while you were busy blowing Tomb Raider, Crysis 3, Metro, etc up.

Then when you were done with all your gaming and you received your, "Final notice before we bill you for the review system, please return!" you squealed like a piggy and began hurriedly writing a review.

That's when the cold reality of day came the next morning. Soon, your precious would no longer be yours. Soon, you would not have tri-Titan SLI. Soon, you would be back to normal people gaming.

I agree with some other replies, they should have waited and used the 900D and also used thicker rads. That's the reason the fans have to be turned up so high. Those look like 35mm rads, which probably have a high FPI count (20-30) is my guess. If they had used thick 60mm rads, they could have turned the fans down much lower or only used 1 set and got the same or better temps at lower noise. Dual loops would have also helped, but at that point you might as well do it yourself lol.Reply

For $9k I'm not expecting a 51dB loud computer but rather about 35dB.I have a loud computer with otherwise perfect specs and boy I am looking forward to the next one which will be silent as a priority.Also 240GB SSD is absolutely not enough, for the price I'm expecting 480GB at the very least.

Honestly, the cooling is clearly poor for that price.That crazy overclock sure is heating up the water, but not like those power hungry Titans.I have seen on a forum a dude with 2 Titans on water at around 40C.This build, with the cards being at 66C, that means the water is quite hot. No wonder the cpu is going over 80. For a build of this magnitude, it is quite sad.For cooling that CPU, I would have taken 2 radiators because of that overclock, and 2 radiators for each GPU to keep that water temperature down. That's 8 radiators total. 5 isn't enough for a single loop.Personnaly, I would have either:1) Made a double loop, that way the gpus could have heated the water all they wanted on their side and the cpu would have had more breathing space.2) Or, if I'm not mistaken, that looks like some Koolance quick disconnect plugs around the gpus. http://koolance.com/help-quick-disconnect-shutoff-...That means we could easily add a radbox on the back and get 3 more radiators in that system. http://koolance.com/radiator-mounting-bracket-with...That would give a much better thermal performance, and mabey give the chance to keep the fans a low speed at all time. Sure it looks ugly, but someone who can do it should in my opinion.Reply

this is 8K stuff. beastly mainly. it must be targeted the enthusiast gaming user.with those triple titans it seem the motherboard is not quite match.otherwise, maybe maximus v extreme will be a wise choice.and without a discrete sound card..well i feel something missing in this rig.Reply

+Ryan are you susing a DSLR type camera? If so you can reduce the glare and reflections on the cases by buying a polarization filter and using it accordingly. Would make great reviews even better!Thanks for your hard work.Reply

All these idiots did was slap in the most expensive shit they could find. No real thought put into this. No thought put into how fucking loud this thing is or how usable. Its just one big circlejerk. I should charge them 100$ for wasting my time looking at it.

Yoiu might think "yeah you say all that but if you got one youd be happy" Yeah, realistically Id be very happy, becuse Id sell the POS for 7-8k$ even if its individual parts and build a better PC for 2k and save the rest.Reply

something - ok a bunch of things - about this system build bother me... a lot.

a lot a lot.

actually more than a lot a lot lol...

why use this "always on" power sucking money sink water cooling system, when the Titan SLI has fan control sensors so sensitive that it can respond to microscopic changes in environment?

and this cooling system, as the reviewer mentions, packs up all the free volume inside the casing, meaning the Titan's own cooling system is being completely sabotaged by origin's water cooling.... it doesnt have nearly enough internal volume of air to do what it's intended to do.

also, it's windows 7 not windows 8, so it has ZERO memristor pathing optimization, or green power consumption reductions, or auto fan control.

on top of all that, i have to look at that water cooling being stuffed in there, creating insufficient airflow for the titan's on board vents and fan, and what comes to mind is that the design of the air intakes and fan - look at the fan back casing on the titan... it;s an acoustic bouncer and amplifier. why would you AMPLIFY fan noise?

there can only be one reason for that. the shape of the rotor blades must be designed to combine the fan's low end air rumble with the air intake sound to create a harmonic which gives you SIGNAL CANCELLATION of your high end fan motor noise.

but without sufficient air volume inside the case, the morons turned signal cancellation into amplified motor noise because sound pitch gets altered, to a higher tone, and AMPLIFIED in a vacuum or partial vacuum. so instead of two layers of noise and two cancelled layers of noise, you end up with the 4 normal noise layers PLUS a harmonic which shouldnt be there.

and this reduced pressure from the fans not having enough air volume gives you a whole other problem in terms of creating more heat, BECAUSE WATER BOILS AT A LOWER TEMPERATURE AT LOWER PRESSURE!!!

I don't know what genius went and did this and for what reason, and I don't know how someone with this little basic knowledge of physics gets a job building high end computer systems, but I do know he sabotaged the performance tests. Badly.

To me, it seems like his water cooler was the noise and heat and power consumption problem, AND the 3rd card underperformance problem.Reply